(no subject)

[alexseanchai]

For reasons I am attempting to cast on to knit a small purse. The pattern is the Envelope Bag from The Chicks With Sticks Guide to Knitting, and the materials list includes novelty yarn as well as worsted-weight wool, held together to knit the bulk of the purse. The novelty yarn I picked out to go with my nice navy worsted wool is Premier Yarns' Spangle (Silver Celebration colorway, which is silver and black sparkle), which is 75% nylon 25% metallic.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to keep the wool and the Spangle at the same tension such that I can actually do a long-tail cast-on (the only kind I know) with the tails the same length. I tried tying the very ends together, but no dice; that just means the Spangle ends up straight and the wool curving.

Short of going back to the yarn store and picking up a different novelty yarn, what do I need to do here?

ETA: Turns out the answer is "cut off the unraveled end of the yarn". Oy.

Comments

[niqaeli]

For long-tail, the extra tails can then be knitted in to get them out of the way, for which it might be nice to have them the same length (although if they are knitting at a different tension, having them the actual same length will make them run out at different times -- if trying for a neat end to that, I'd knit them in first, see which I ran out of first, and trim the other down to match).

But it shouldn't matter if the tails are the same length for the purposes of the cast-on itself as long as you're holding the tension consistently in the yarns?

Anyway, good luck, because casting on is the worst. It is my least favourite part of any knitting project. *wry*

[alexseanchai]

No, actually the problem really was that the Spangle had unraveled a distance! Hang on, I'll take a pic of the unraveled bit and the raveled bit side by side so you can see.

Observe please that the raveled yarn, the bottom, is not stretchy in the same way that the unraveled yarn, the top, is!

For your NEXT weird yarn

[dialecticdreamer]

Tie a KNOT, a plain overcast knot, in the end before you start manipulatingthe weird yarn, spangly, fun fur, whatever. Give yourself an extra finger-width of that, hold with worsted (for bulk, just like the envelope purse) and work as usual. When you're ready to work in ends, snip off the knot and you have a CLEAN end of a VERY fiddly yarn to work with.

It helps.

Re: For your NEXT weird yarn

[alexseanchai]

Thanks.